Protesters, police clash as the European Central Bank opens its new headquarters

Anti-capitalism protestors clashed with police Wednesday as the European Central Bank unveiled its new $1.4 billion headquarters in Frankfurt. It made for a chaotic scene, both on the ground and on social media. Protestors set fire to barricades and cars, leaving a thick haze floating over the city’s skyline.

Nearly 90 police have been hurt by stones and unidentified liquids thrown by a small number of aggressive protestors. Police used pepper spray and water cannons to try to control the crowd and make a path through the protestors to the entrance of the new ECB building. Some 350 demonstrators have been arrested and dozens injured.

The protest is led by a group called Blockupy and German workers’ unions. An estimated 10,000 demonstrators have taken to the streets to campaign against what they see as unfair practices by the ECB that have led to debilitating austerity measures in EU member states.

The ECB is in charge of managing the euro and outlining euro zone policy. It has also played a key role — in partnership with the International Monetary Fund and European Commission — in setting conditions for bailouts in Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Cyprus.

ECB President Mario Draghi addressed a crowd at the grand opening of the new headquarters, inaugurating the 600-foot-tall tinted glass building that will serve as the new home for thousands of central bankers.

European unity is being strained. People are going through very difficult times. There are some, like many of the protesters outside today, who believe the problem is that Europe is doing too little.

But the euro area is not a political union of the sort where some countries permanently pay for others. It has always been understood that countries have to be able to stand on their own two feet – that each is responsible for its own policies. The fact that some had to go through a difficult period of adjustment was therefore not a choice that was imposed on them. It was a consequence of their past decisions.

Activists balked at the expense of the new building, which cost an estimated 1.3 billion euro to build. They see it as a symbol of the bank’s detachment from the economic pain that has plagued many EU countries. Blockupy coordinators said on their website that “there’s nothing to celebrate in your handling of the crisis” and encouraged supporters to take to the streets during the debut of the ECB’s new building.

Hesse’s Minister of Economy Tarek Al-Wazier, left, the President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi and Frankfurt’s mayor Peter Feldmann stand side-by side during the opening ceremony of the ECB’s new headquarters.Photograph by Frank Rumpenhorst — picture-alliance/dpa/AP

Here’s even more evidence that the intended peaceful protests have become less than friendly.

“You shouldn’t get your bearings from breaking things, but rather from creating them,” the well-known venture capitalist and recent author told a packed auditorium at University of California at Berkeley Wednesday night.

A good forty minutes into his talk, Thiel, a co-founder of online payment service PayPal and early Facebook investor, was disrupted: protestors stormed the stage and shut down the event.

Thiel was invited to discuss development in the developed world by the Berkeley Forum, a non-partisan student group that brings speakers to campus. The evening, the product of nearly two months of work, was to be divided into four parts: a speech by Thiel, an interview by a student moderator, questions from specially selected audience members, and a final audience Q&A, capped off with his signing his recent book, Zero to One. His appearance just happened to coincide with an uptick in Berkeley’s famous political activism following the recent grand jury decisions in Ferguson, Mo. and New York related to police killings involving African-Americans.

During the first half of his speech, Thiel discussed the importance of monopolies and iconoclasm. A noted libertarian, he once wrote that freedom and democracy are incompatible. A good monopoly is one that innovates and creates new things, he pointed out, saying his advice was for entrepreneurs to pick small markets where they wouldn’t face much competition. Google is a monopoly when it comes to search, he explained. They just don’t talk about it.

Thiel also mentioned that society resists innovation. “There’s a strange phenomenon in Silicon Valley where most of the people who start companies suffer from mild Asperger’s,” he said. “That’s a critique of our society, not of them.” Anyone with interesting ideas will be talked out of them, while investors are socialized to invest in what sounds familiar, rather than in ideas that could be game-changing.

Anyone who copies Facebook or Google is missing the point, he said, because Facebook and Google were game changers. To succeed, entrepreneurs have to do something that’s radically different from the status quo.

“Trends are overrated,” he said. “If you hear big data or the cloud, run away, it’s a fraud. A buzzword tells you someone is undifferentiated in a category.”

As he spoke, a slow rumbling from protestors could be heard in the background. From time to time it was loud enough to drown him out.

“That’s so Berkeley,” Thiel said, while the audience laughed.

There was less laughter when one of the organizers asked for help barricading the doors because protestors were trying to enter. Members of the audience rushed up the aisles to assist.

When everyone was seated again, Thiel continued accompanied by the rumble of protesters screaming outside and a steady pounding against the doors. Soon after, the organizer told the audience she could no longer guarantee their safety and asked what they wanted to do (they voted to continue). A student moderator asked Thiel how he felt about the tradeoffs between political activism, which can provoke change but also impacts productivity.

“Political activism makes people angry,” Thiel said.

At that point, almost on cue, an audience member stood up and yelled, “F—you.” The doors of auditorium burst open and a flood of protestors waving signs spilled across the auditorium and chanted “No NSA” before switching to “Black lives matter.”

The audience, indignant about the interruption, surged to its feet and chanted “go home,” and “Peter Thiel matters.” For a few moments there was a screaming stand-off as the protestors and audience members faced each other.

Thiel was escorted off of the stage and organizers relayed the obvious: The event was canceled. A protestor apologized to organizers – sort of – before leaving.

“I’m sorry but we had to shut it down to get media attention,” the protester said.

Afterwards, organizers and attendees gathered in small clumps to voice their outrage. “It was unproductive for the protestors and it was unproductive for us,” said Serena Gupta a math and computer science major at Berkeley. “They should have started a dialogue. Thiel would have been open to questions, he stayed on stage until they were in his face.”

Parthiv Mohan, a cognitive science and computer science major, said: “The protestors chanted as if we thought black lives didn’t matter. For all they know we could have been out protesting with them last night.”

(Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of U.C. Berkeley student. He is Parthiv Mohan, not Parthir)

This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com

By Karl Vick, TIME

A grand jury declined to indict Ferguson, Mo. Police Officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, after an encounter in the St. Louis suburb on Aug. 9. The decision, announced Monday evening, means Wilson will not face criminal charges in a case that set off sustained unrest and ignited a national debate about race, privilege and policing in America.

The announcement immediately revived the frustrations of protesters who filled the streets of Ferguson for weeks this summer, and had made elaborate preparations to demonstrate against the outcome many predicted from the grand jury.

In a statement, Brown’s family called for peaceful protest and urged support for their campaign to promote police body cameras. “We are profoundly disappointed that the killer of our child will not face the consequence of his actions,” the statement said. “While we understand that many others share our pain, we ask that you channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change. We need to work together to fix the system that allowed this to happen.”

Lesley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, in sunglasses, reacts as she listens to the announcement of the grand jury decision on November 24, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri.Photograph by Charlie Riedel — AP

As the decision neared, police were poised for protestors’ frustration to spill over. City, county and state officers, as well as National Guard, were marshaled under a unified command as part of a state of emergency that Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon imposed in advance on Nov. 17, citing “the possibility of expanded unrest.” The atmosphere has been so charged that many area schools closed early for Thanksgiving break and Nixon reiterated his call for calm on Monday ahead of the grand jury’s announcement.

The preparations on both sides fed a sense that the first official finding in Brown’s death would inevitably generate another occasion for talking past one another, and perhaps more violence. Far from being resolved, the mistrust that marked the largely spontaneous original protests – characterized by raised arms and chants of “Don’t Shoot” – had not abated. Nor had the reality that propelled Ferguson onto the national stage: the unwelcome attention African-Americans routinely receive from police, and disproportionate treatment from the justice system as a whole.

In that realm, the details of the Brown case are less significant than the broader experience of many black Americans any time they encounter a uniformed officer. Outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in September that, though he served as the nation’s top law enforcement official, as an African-American man who has been searched unnecessarily by police, “I also carry with me the mistrust that some citizens harbor for those who wear the badge.”

In Ferguson, where the population is two-thirds black, the situation was exacerbated by the composition of a police department that had only four African-Americans on a force of 53. When protests broke out, the heavy duty military gear officers donned to confront them did nothing to diminish the impression of antagonism between police and public. Much of that armor was left over from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and distributed by the Pentagon to local law enforcement departments. The battle gear did little to serve a police force that, like many in the U.S., is seen by minorities “as trying to dominate rather than serve and protect,” in the phrase of Yale Law School Professor Tom Tyler, an expert on law enforcement and public trust.

“This is more than Michael Brown,” area resident Rick Canamore, 50, said Monday as he protested in front of the Ferguson police headquarters. Brown’s death “tipped the pot over, but this has been boiling for years.”

Two federal investigations are still pending. The FBI is investigating whether Wilson violated Brown’s civil rights. Separately, the Justice Department is examining the civil rights record of the Ferguson Police Department as a whole. And Brown’s family could still file a civil wrongful death lawsuit.

But the fraught months following Brown’s death have been focused on the grand jury’s finding, which was both expected and atypical. Expected because a series of leaks in October revealed details that supported Wilson’s version of the encounter. These include medical reports of injuries to Wilson’s face, which officials have said occurred when Brown reached into the patrol vehicle and struck Wilson. Two shots were fired inside the vehicle, but Brown was killed after Wilson climbed out of the vehicle to pursue the 6-foot, 4-inch, 289 pound teen.

Photo of Officer Darren Wilson as released by the prosecutor’s office on the day of the altercation with Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 .Photograph by St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office — Reuters

Local officials emphasized that the grand jury examining the Ferguson case had unusual leeway – though critics say that leeway tended to serve Wilson. The panel, which had already been seated at the time of the Brown’s death, was broadly representative of St. Louis County, with nine whites and three African-Americans. It met weekly for three months, and was presented “absolutely everything” about the altercation, said St. Louis County chief prosecuting attorney Robert P. McCulloch.

That meant it heard from witnesses who said Brown appeared to have had his arms up in surrender at the moment he was shot, as well as from witnesses who supported Wilson’s account that the teen attacked him, and was charging at him head-down at the time of the shooting. One of Brown’s six bullet wounds was on the top of his head.

In another departure from normal proceedings, the grand jurors did not hear a prosecutor recommend a charge and present evidence supporting it. Instead, they were offered a range of possible charges, from murder to involuntary manslaughter. Activists say that increased the likelihood no indictment would be brought.

In addition, Wilson took the unusual step of testifying, which seldom happens because defense attorneys are not allowed to be present in grand jury proceedings. But it may well have helped the officer, inasmuch as the question before jurors was whether he had reason to fear for his life.

In short, the grand jury’s inquiry proceeded very much like a trial – but in secret, as grand jury proceedings always are. That sat poorly with attorneys representing Brown’s family. The prosecutor’s office took the unusual step of recording the sessions, and promised to release them if indictment was declined, apparently in hopes of achieving a measure of transparency after the fact.

That might not have been possible. “If there’s no true bill,” Adolphus Pruitt of the St. Louis NAACP told TIME in September, “as a community, we are going to be thrust right back into the same discontent and civil disobedience we experienced the first time around.”

Similar vows were heard from a variety of groups that descended on Ferguson in anticipation of the grand jury’s decision. The community remained on edge despite town meetings moderated by national figures, efforts at police reform such as wearable cameras, and sometimes fumbling attempts at reconciliation by local officials. In late September, Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson apologized for leaving Brown’s body in the street for about four hours – infuriating bystanders who saw it as yet another sign of disrespect. The chief’s apology was offered to Brown’s parents, but delivered in a video aired on CNN, and distributed by a public relations firm. Another grievance came Monday afternoon, when attorneys for the Brown family say the parents first learned that the grand jury had reached a decision when they were asked about it by a reporter.

New incidents, meanwhile, kept emotions raw. In Ferguson, where some police officers wore wrist bands reading “I am Darren Wilson,” an officer was shot in the arm while chasing two men who ran from him when he approached them on Sept. 27. And on Oct. 8, an 18-year-old African-American was shot and killed by an off-duty St. Louis police officer after allegedly firing a stolen gun at him.

A police car is set on fire after the announcement of the grand jury decision on November 24, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri.Photograph by Charlie Riedel — AP

The protests that began the night Brown’s lifeless body fell onto Canfield Drive never really stopped. Mostly peaceful demonstrations continued day and night over the weekend before the grand jury announcement, the rowdiness growing the later it got. A dozen people were arrested in a four-day period ending Sunday. The weather helped police, with cold and continuous rain causing protesters to disperse on several occasions, according to the St. Louis County Police Department spokesman Brian Schellman.

The ongoing protests have cast a pall over virtually every corner of the community. Area businesses report sales down as much as 80%. That many decided to board their windows as a preventative measure ahead of the grand jury decision kept even more shoppers away. Donations to local religious groups and nonprofit organizations have been sluggish. A local food pantry’s stock is low because “people don’t want to come into the area,” says Jason Bryant, a local pastor.

It’s been enough that even local residents eager to see the incident lead to lasting change are ready for the eyes of the world to turn elsewhere. As Taneesha Jones, 31, a Ferguson resident who lives near the QwikTrip gas station that was torched in the first wave of looting, put it Monday: “Let’s just get this over with so we can all move on.”

(This story was updated with additional information)

With reporting by Alex Altman/Washington, D.C., Kristina Sauerwein/Ferguson, Mo. and Dan Kedmey/New York

Atlantic City workers protest casino closing and Carl Icahn

Members of the Unite Here Local 54 union who work at Atlantic City’s Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort walked the length of the city’s famed boardwalk on Wednesday evening to protest cuts to their benefits and a proposal to close the bankrupt casino on December 12.

The workers took sharp aim at billionaire Carl Icahn, the Taj Mahal’s sole debt holder, by organizing a protest under the #DontCahnMe tag on Twitter and wearing “I Will Not Be Cahned” stickers during the march. They walked Wednesday night from the Taj Mahal to the Tropicana casino, which Icahn owns.

“We’re out here tonight to demand the question of Mr. Icahn: are you going to be the hero or are you going to be the villain?” Unite Here Local 54 President Robert McDevitt told Fortune on Wednesday. “It’s totally within his power to keep the Taj Mahal open with the same benefits as other workers in Atlantic City.”

Trump Entertainment did not immediately return a request for comment.

Last month, a federal judge allowed the Taj to terminate a union contract and stop paying into the union health fund. Unite Here has appealed that decision.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump Entertainment Resorts posted notices warning customers that the Taj would close December 12. The company has said that the closure could be avoided if the union drops its appeal of the court decision ending its contract.

The casino is pursing a deal to hand itself over to Icahn in exchange for him canceling $286 million of its debt that he owns. Icahn would then invest $100 million into the Taj. That plan is dependent on the company securing state tax breaks worth $175 million, a proposal the government has rejected.

Taj Mahal workers were joined on the boardwalk Wednesday night by employees from the city’s other casinos. Dan Cunningham, a bartender at Caesars, said he feared that his job might be at risk if the “domino effect keeps going.”

If the Taj Mahal shuts down, it will be fifth casino to close its doors this year. Atlantic City started the year with 12 casinos but, so far, The Atlantic Palace, Revel, The Showboat, and Trump Plaza have already called it quits.

“Once Ichan institutes [these cuts], the rest of the casinos will have a ‘me too’ policy,” says Chuck Baker, who has worked as a cook at the Taj since 1990. “Therefore, whatever you get, I’ll get. ‘You’re not paying into health care, well, neither am I. You’re not paying into pension or severance, I won’t either.’” If that happens, Baker, a resident of Atlantic City, says, “The whole economy around South Jersey is gone.”

This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com.

By David Stout, TIME

Hong Kong’s beleaguered Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying is facing swelling allegations of financial impropriety, after it emerged that he had received undeclared payments from an Australian company during his time in office — that’s according to an investigation published by Fairfax Media in Australia this week.

The article, appearing in the Age and other Fairfax newspapers, said the serving chief executive had pocketed “millions in secret fees from a listed Australian company in return for supporting its Asian business ambitions.”

Leung reportedly received more than $6 million in relation to an agreement struck between property-services firm DTZ, where he served as Asia-Pacific director before becoming chief executive, and Australian engineering company UGL.

Days before leaving DTZ, described as an “insolvent 200-year-old British property service,” Leung signed a contract promising him millions if he refrained from directly competing with UGL or DTZ and from poaching their staff. He was also required to act as a “referee and adviser” to UGL “from time to time.”

Leung resigned from DTZ on Nov. 24, 2011, three days before announcing his official candidacy for the office of chief executive. He left the company’s ranks on Dec. 4, one day after UGL acquired DTZ.

The report says Leung received the payment in two installments in 2012 and 2013, while he was serving as chief executive.

Concern and outrage has been expressed in Hong Kong that Leung allowed himself to be contracted to act as “referee and adviser” to a private company while serving as Hong Kong’s head of government.

Leung’s office was quick to defend his dealings as legal following the publication of the story on Wednesday and said he had done no work for UGL since assuming office.

“It is standard business practice to pay for such [noncompeting and nonpoaching] undertakings, as you are requiring the individual to take on obligations and to forgo future opportunities,” read a statement released by the chief executive’s office, which pointed out that there was no legal requirement for Leung to declare the payments, since they related to the period before his election.

Nevertheless, the revelations couldn’t have come at a worse time for Hong Kong’s widely reviled political chief. The financial hub has been rocked by unprecedented street demonstrations for nearly two weeks, with student-led protesters calling for greater democracy. There are also widespread calls for Leung’s ouster because he is seen as being more loyal to Hong Kong’s sovereign power China than he is to Hong Kong.

“Any person facing such a situation, if he has a sense of decency, should have resigned unless he can give a very convincing and satisfactory defense to all the charges now against him,” said Albert Ho, the former chairman of the Democratic Party, during a press conference in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council building on Thursday.

Lam Cheuk-ting, head of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, said Leung bore a responsibility to declare the payments since “the contract period also covers part of Leung’s tenure.”

Despite the controversy and ongoing protests, Leung has repeated on several occasions that he has no desire to resign.

In a letter to the New York Times published on Thursday, the embattled chief executive attempted to bat away suggestions that Hong Kong’s core values were in peril and hit back at allegations that Beijing had reneged on its commitments to Hong Kong’s democratic future.

“Any suggestion that the Chinese government is ‘interfering’ in the current electoral reform debate is unfounded,” wrote Leung. “Hong Kong’s future electoral, economic and social development is a natural and legitimate concern of our sovereign, and is in keeping with the principle of the high degree of autonomy that Hong Kong enjoys.”

Tensions ease in Hong Kong as student leaders and government agree to talks

This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com.

By Rishi Iyengar / Hong Kong

The leadership of Hong Kong’s democracy movement agreed to engage in formal dialogue with the government on Monday night, after the ninth day of protests began with protesters visibly flagging from their prolonged occupation of three key areas of the city.

Representatives from the two student groups leading the protests — Scholarism and the Hong Kong Federation of Students — engaged in a second round of preliminary talks with a government official late Monday, Agence France-Presse reported.

“We hope there will be mutual respect shown during the meeting,” said Ray Lau, undersecretary of constitutional and mainland affairs. Lau is set to meet with the student leaders again on Tuesday, to set a time and place for talks with Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, the deputy of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.

The students have refused to meet with Leung. They have been calling for his ouster as well as for the right to choose his successor through free elections.

A few hundred protesters remained Monday at the sit-ins in Admiralty, Causeway Bay and across the harbor in Mong Kok, as some schools in affected areas reopened and most people went back to work as normal. Civil servants were granted access to the Central Government Offices, which has been besieged by demonstrators since Sept. 27.

The protest sites were still occupied Tuesday, with the situation calm. In the financial district, office workers presented an uncommon sight as they mingled with protesters and enjoyed their lunch breaks amid the silence and freshness of barricaded streets that are free, for once, of cars and choking fumes.

Secretary Pritzker’s emotional ties to Ukraine

No country today appeals more to the American hero complex than Ukraine: David against the Russian Goliath, the object of Putin aggression for daring to see its future alongside Europe’s free markets.

There’s only one problem with our favorite underdog: Ukraine’s economy remains badly pock-marked by corruption and graft. No amount of aid—including a $1 billion loan guarantee package from the U.S. – will help the country if it doesn’t clean out its own closets. According to global corruption ratings, Ukraine is worse even than Russia.

Penny Pritzker delivered that tough love message in Kiev, the city of her great grandfather’s birth, last week. “President [Petro] Poroshenko said the right things,” the Commerce Secretary, referring to his promise to adopt economic reforms, told me when she returned Friday after stops in Poland and Turkey. “But do they have the will?” That, of course, is a very different question.

Pritzker’s visit may have provided Poroshenko with useful political cover against vested interests protecting the status quo; two of three anti-corruption measures he introduced passed the Parliament. But that’s just a start.

For Pritzker, the visit packed an emotional punch. The Pritzker family fortune can be traced back to Kiev, where her great grandfather followed his brother’s escape from Tsarist Russia to the United States. The latter, Jewish and a political dissident, was about to be sent to Siberia.

Instead, the pair made it to the U.S. via Paris. Penny’s great-grandfather, Nicholas, earned nickels selling newspapers on the streets of Chicago before putting himself through law school and starting his own firm. His son Jay—together with Penny’s uncle and late father—would build the Hyatt hotel chain and one of Chicago’s great family fortunes (one that Penny herself helped expand, only to later dismantle in the face of an epic family battle.)

While she was in Kiev, Pritzker walked Maidan Square— the site of the brutal crackdown on protesters that led to the ousting of a Russian-backed president, followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The Commerce Secretary listened to powerful political stories from the Ukrainians she met—but also heard troubling descriptions of widespread corruption from local entrepreneurs trying to start and run businesses.

Earlier this year, as I spent time with Pritzker and profiled her life, I was constantly struck by the resilience she showed in a tragedy-filled life. She’s remains relentlessly optimistic regardless of what has been comes her way. Pritzker’s attitude toward Ukraine’s economic prospects is no different: She told me, “As [Chicago Mayor] Rahm Emanuel says, don’t let a good crisis go to waste.”

Why Hong Kong’s economy can take on protesters

Hong Kong has many claims to fame. It is a center of global capitalism, a model of clean government, an easy place for expats to call home, and a good place for bargain shopping. As such, it remains a jewel in China’s economic crown. It is unsurprising, therefore, that as the protests in Hong Kong continue into their second week, the business community is growing increasingly concerned. Mainland tourists are canceling their trips to Hong Kong, the island’s retail sector is suffering, and the Hong Kong stock market is down.

Neither Beijing nor Hong Kong will benefit from a prolonged standoff. As The Economist has reported, two-thirds of foreign direct investments into China in 2013 flowed through Hong Kong (up from less than one-third in 2005); its stock exchange continues to outperform that of Shanghai—since 2012, it has raised $43 billion in initial public offerings as opposed to $25 billion on the mainland exchanges; and “more than anywhere else in the world, Hong Kong has provided Chinese companies with access to global capital markets for bond and loan financing.” The stakes are high for Hong Kong as well. Its exports, bank lending, and tourism industry are all heavily reliant on mainland Chinese consumers.

Moreover, according to some analysts, the protests themselves are rooted in economic disparities and resentment. Hong Kong Chinese resent the increasing number of wealthy mainland Chinese moving to the territory, have a sense of declining economic opportunity, and have lost their identity.

Yet history suggests that such a focus on economic explanations and ramifications is misplaced. As much as Hong Kong’s reputation derives from its economic strengths, it is also a vibrant center for political debate and civic participation. While this most recent round of demonstrations has captured the world’s attention, this tiny island of 7 million people takes to the streets every year in support of political issues. Protests run the gamut from opposition to Japan’s behavior in World War II to concern over the impacts of the WTO and globalization. Every year, there is a march to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

Nothing, however, galvanizes the Hong Kong people more than the specter of Beijing infringing on or negating their political rights. Only 30 minutes after Hong Kong’s handover to China on on July 1, 1997, thousands of people gathered to light flames of democracy and protest Beijing disbanding the democratically elected legislative council in favor of a new provisional legislature. In 2003, a half million Hong Kong citizens demonstrated against proposed new security laws; and the following year, 200,000 people marched when Beijing announced that Hong Kong would not have universal suffrage for the 2007 elections. In 2012, hundreds of thousands again turned out to protest Beijing’s efforts to enforce a national patriotic education curriculum in the Hong Kong Schools. And today Hong Kong is the site of a massive protest of over 500,000 people demonstrating against Beijing’s decision to limit the slate of candidates for chief executive in 2017 to one selected by a Beijing-dominated committee.

What are the implications of this culture of protest for Beijing? First, Beijing should not mistake this protest as primarily driven by economics. While there is economic discontent in Hong Kong, its citizens protest when the economy is strong and when the economy is weak. There is no reason to believe that these protests are not overwhelmingly about just what the demonstrators say they are—less control by Beijing and greater freedom for the Hong Kong people in determining the candidates for the 2017 chief executive elections.

In addition, the political roots of the protest mean that Beijing’s ‘one-country two systems’ principle is not yet ready for mass adoption. The protests send a clear signal to Taiwan that reunification plans should remain on the back burner—if in fact they are on Taiwan’s burner at all.

Above all, the protests in Hong Kong may well signal that there is a broader desire for greater political participation in mainland China than Beijing is willing to acknowledge. Demands for a meaningful political voice do not only emanate from political dissidents or misguided scholars in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Instead, as in Hong Kong, they likely also reside in the form of 80-year old grandmothers, 50-year-old old truck drivers, and 15-year old students.

The good news for Beijing—and Hong Kong—is that, as we have seen in Beijing, New York, and most recently in Vietnam—the impact of such wide-scale protests on local economies is short-term and ultimately negligible. What really matters is the long-term political stability of Hong Kong—and that depends on understanding the root causes of the protest, their implications, and, of course, the ultimate outcome. Compromise is possible and in the interest of all sides. For that to happen, however, Beijing needs to begin by understanding the fundamental difference between Occupy Central and Occupy Central with Love and Peace.

Beijing’s battle plan for Hong Kong

The rapid escalation of the pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong caught almost everyone by surprise.

Within a matter of days, after battling riot police and tear gas, the student-led movement succeeded in paralyzing key sections of Asia’s commercial hub and focusing the world’s attention on a political crisis that could cause a grave deterioration in relations between China and the West.

At the moment, the biggest worry hinges on whether Beijing will use force, Tiananmen-style, to crush the peaceful protest. The Chinese government could do so either by ordering the Hong Kong authorities to send in anti-riot police again or by deploying the Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops stationed in the former British colony. Based on the announcement made by Hong Kong’s chief executive CY Leung that he expects the protest to “last a long time” and the muted public response from Beijing so far, it appears that the Chinese government has adopted a different strategy, at least for now.

The centerpiece of this short-term strategy is to allow the protest to continue and hope that the leaderless movement will self-destruct by exhausting its energy, growing internal disagreement, and alienating the Hong Kong public through the disruption of traffic and business.

Beijing seems to have opted for this strategy in part because of the coincidence of the protest with a weeklong holiday celebrating the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic (October 1). Chinese leaders do not want to have a bloodbath in Hong Kong when they are supposed to toast the Communist Party’s achievements or enjoy a relaxing break themselves. Also by pure coincidence, the party is to convene its annual central committee plenum between October 20 and 23. Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping and his colleagues have no desire to sanction a brutal crackdown in Hong Kong before the conclave. The last thing they want is to have the plenum focused on the crisis in Hong Kong, which would reflect poorly on the leadership.

The Chinese government also seems to believe that the protest may hurt its image but does not pose a real threat. The immediate target is the Hong Kong government and, more specifically, chief executive CY Leung, who bears the responsibility for the initial mishandling of the protest and is the target of public anger in Hong Kong. This somehow insulates Beijing, which can claim with a straight face that it has full confidence in Leung’s ability to manage the protest. More importantly, Beijing holds the trump card: genuine universal suffrage and direct elections—the demands of the pro-democracy protestors—are impossible without Beijing’s consent.

So it is reasonable to assume that Hong Kong’s authorities will tolerate the protest and pray for its self-destruction until the end of the month. But after this grace period is over, things could turn very ugly very quickly.

The Chinese government is unlikely to give in to the demands of the pro-democracy protestors. Granting Hong Kong universal suffrage would not only be a humiliating loss for the Communist Party, it would also set a dangerous precedent that could encourage pro-democracy forces on the mainland to follow the example of Hong Kong’s students. The challenge for Beijing is to quash the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in a way that does not bear any resemblance to the tragedy of Tiananmen in 1989.

If Beijing’s Machiavellian calculations are right, we could expect the leaderless student movement to lose momentum as protestors begin to disagree about their goals and as the effects of physical exhaustion and hardship take their toll. In the meantime, public opinion could turn against the protestors because of the seemingly benign tolerance of the authorities and the unreasonableness of the protestors and the disruption they have caused.

In this atmosphere, Beijing could organize counter-demonstrations, as it has on previous occasions. (After Hong Kong’s pro-democracy forces held a huge rally on July 1, pro-Beijing forces orchestrated a march on August 17.) Should such counter-demonstrations take place, we cannot rule out violent confrontation between the pro-democracy forces and the pro-Beijing elements. Such an incident would provide a perfect excuse for the Hong Kong government to deploy a massive police force and crush the pro-democracy movement, all under the pretext of maintaining law and order.

If anything, the Communist Party has proved itself a formidable foe to those who believe that democracy is preferable to one-party rule. So the protestors in Hong Kong would be wise to have their own plan—just in case.

Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and a non-resident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States